


Fuzz

by but_seriously



Category: The Great (TV 2020)
Genre: F/M, the modern college christmas au absolutely nobody fucking asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27687850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/but_seriously/pseuds/but_seriously
Summary: Peter wakes up in a dumpster.
Relationships: Catherine/Peter III (The Great TV 2020)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 59





	Fuzz

**Author's Note:**

> i know. i regret some things.

Peter wakes up in a dumpster.

There’s a banana peel wilting absolutely cartoonishly on his chest, and something that feels suspiciously like a tin can digging into his arse. He is buzzed, buffooned, and blazed brilliantly out of his mind.

There are worst places to wake up, he surmises, wriggling slightly as he settles into the rubbish. He still remembers that one time he snorted something rancid and woke up naked on Velementov’s roof on the other side of the city.

He’s not sure how or why or when or particularly how, but the next time he wakes up, he is in a bathtub.

**&**

Honestly, Catherine regrets signing the lease for the apartment she shared with Imperial College’s resident D&D king.

It was bad enough when Orlo had brought back an injured badger he found on his way home and had her stay up half the night nursing it back to health, trying to avoid scratch marks on her face.

This time he’s brought back a homeless person.

She stares unseeingly at his face as he tries to justify himself, feeling her vision tinged red the more words come out of his mouth.

“… know how I like to take the scenic route home, and I happened to pass by the alley by Barry’s pond and - there he was!”

“I signed you up for RSPCA for a _reason_ , Orlo!” she yells as she, her terrible flatmate, and the homeless person fill up their shared bathroom. 

The homeless person winces and the room is filled with squeaky porcelain noises as he writhes awake.

Orlo, not knowing where to put him, had placed a cushion under his neck in the bathtub.

“I could not just _leave_ him there!” Orlo hisses.

“I’m pretty sure you abducted him out of his home, Orlo. The police are going to be knocking on our door when his wife realises he’s missing!”

“Don’t have a wife,” the homeless man slurs.

“He’s harmless,” Orlo persists, though his case is working terribly against him as the inebriated body he’d lugged home dry heaves onto his slippers. “It’s freezing, and nobody should be left to celebrate today amongst rotten fruit and baby throw up!”

“Do you know what a shiv is, Orlo?” Catherine gesticulates wildly. “What if he has a shiv!”

Orlo mouths wordlessly at her for a bit before spluttering, “Why the fuck would he have a shiv!”

“To stab us!” Catherine widens her eyes.

“He won’t stab us!” Orlo hisses.

“He looks like he very well _could_ for a gram of coke,” Catherine hisses back. “He smells like a junkie!”

“Am not a junkie,” the homeless man slurs again, lifting one finger weakly in a way that is oddly refined at the same time. “It’s just the dumpster.”

Ignoring the junkie, Orlo, on the edge of some kind of manic gripping him, says, “All the more reason to try and save his soul! Didn’t you decide you wanted to be a better Christian–and - and didn’t Voltaire say ‘the safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience?’ And didn’t we _just_ agree last night that we would live more dangerously from now on–?”

“For fuck’s sake, Orlo,” Catherine replies in one long exhale. She lowers her forehead to her hand, her silken pink robe eclipsing her expression from. “A witty saying proves nothing.”

“It proves that you know your Voltaire, and I know you. You wouldn’t let a poor man languish on this day of all days.”

She peers at him suspiciously through her fingers. “Since when have you cared about Christmas?”

“I was bored and read Archie’s pamphlet the other day,” Orlo shrugs. “I understand the sentiment, but still a bit dodgy on the divine figures.” 

“W’the fuck am I - Grigor?” the homeless junkie slurs once more. He paws at the hem of Catherine’s robe. “George?”

Orlo and Catherine stare.

Very slowly, her hand reaches down to peel off the foil that had been plastered to a third of the homeless junkie’s face.

“Orlo,” Catherine snarls quietly. “You didn’t bring back a drunk homeless junkie. You brought back worse.”

**&**

Catherine practically wears holes in the already-worn carpet of their hall as she screams at him, and soon Marial pops her head through the fire escape window to see what’s up. She had been bored shitless upstairs and was thrilled to hear what sounded like the beginnings of Orlo’s murder.

“It’s barely 7am,” Marial says in lieu of greeting, swinging her legs in. “What’s he managed to do now?”

“He brought Peter Fyodorovich home,” Catherine says witheringly.

Marial blinks in surprise. Perhaps she’s even a bit impressed. “I didn’t know you swung that way, Orlo, and I certainly didn’t think you had the balls to secure that.”

“No, not - It’s - you’re just -!” Orlo snaps his mouth shut. “I thank you for your colourful imagination ruining the morning for us, Mar.”

“Don’t call me Mar, we’re not friends like that-”

“- was walking home and found him in a dumpster - “

“- and decided to _bring him home_!” 

“- a kind deed goes a really long - ”

“Orlo, why the fuck didn’t you just leave him there?”

“Because he thought he’d brought home _a drunk homeless junkie!_ ”

“He wold have still been a soul either way -!”

“Orlo!”

“Everybody _shut the FUCK UP_ ,” comes a snarled yelling voice from the bathroom.

“That him, then?” Marial raises an eyebrow.

“That’s who?” Leo, who had wondered out into the hall from the noise wrapped only in a bedsheet, asks.

Everybody blushes, including Orlo.

Third flatmate and resident poet Leo flashes them a smile, which goes slightly askew when he catches sight of boots peeking out of the bathtub.

“Peter,” Catherine mutters with none of her earlier vehemence. “Fyodorovich.”

Leo’s eyebrows practically disappear into the curls draping down his forehead. “Peter captain of the football club Fyodorovich? Peter who slept with George while Grigor was in the next room Fyodorovich?”

“The very one,” Marial quips, flashing him a sunny grin.

“You gonna kick him out?” Leo asks, still a bit mumbly from sleep, and Catherine fights the flush creeping up her chest.

“Obviously–” she begins heatedly.

“Think of all the parties we could be invited to,” Leo laughs a bit wistfully. “Terribly exciting things happening all around us today.”

“We were… still thinking about it,” Catherine finishes.

“Crazy shit,” Leo says, shaking his head as he heads back to his room. “And we thought we were going to have a quiet Christmas in.”

As soon as his door closes, all eyes land on Catherine. Marial’s beseeching; Orlo’s triumphant.

“Fine,” Catherine relents with a sigh. “But he stays in the tub.”

**Author's Note:**

> to be continued if anyone cares for any more of this madness


End file.
